Therapeutic walking aids are known in the prior art for supporting persons that cannot normally walk. Most of these depend upon the use of the arms to carry or share the weight of the walker usually borne by the legs. These walking aids are distinguished from wheel chairs in which a person sits or training aids for holding normal children in a walking position. However, such known prior art walking aids are not universally adaptable to conditions encountered by injured, elderly or handicapped persons who need to practice walking when a companion is not available for support.
Therapeutic walking requires extensive practice to gain more normal use of motive powers of the legs, body muscles and nervous system that may have been lost from injury, disease, strokes, old age or handicap. When full normal walking capacity is not present a walker can easily lose balance to result in bodily injury or embarrassment. Injury is more likely if a walker using crutches falls.
Some walking aids are so complicated to mount or so restricted in use that they are inconsistent with use by a person who has walking handicaps, such as those disclosed in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,621,804, R. R. Mueller, Nov. 11, 1986 and 4,463,817, J. R. Mennesson, Aug. 7, 1984. Thus, handicapped legs and/or motive power is not consistent with the necessity to climb into a resident position in some walker aid framework configurations.
Many walking aids are not useful for a walker that may need to use crutches or canes in the process of learning or relearning to walk normally. For example, if the arms must be used for supporting body weight while walking in the walking aid configuration, that is inconsistent with the use of crutches. In the therapy of learning or re-learning to walk, it is important that the walker can walk as naturally as possible, with or without canes or crutches. That is inconsistent in general with prior art design of walking aids, where the aid itself is a crutch, which does not encourage the improvement of walking skills and the development of walking gaits, etc.
A most important factor in rehabilitation of a patient after injury or stroke is the attitude of the patient toward the therapy work. If encumbered by injury and subject to probably loss of balance while practicing walking, and the accompanying fear of injury or embarrassment, the patient may not desire to practice walking without an assistant or companion to rely upon, and recovery is more difficult.
Thus, therapeutic walking programs are often limited by the lack of a helper or companion for assisting those persons who are apt to lose their balance. Accordingly, there is a significant need for a therapeutic walking aid that can be used by a walker, without the need for a companion, that will encourage frequent practice in a prescribed therapeutic walking program.
It is therefore an object of this invention to provide an improved therapeutic walking aid that resolves the foregoing problems.